Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Fritee of Cold Boiled Chicken
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the batter
Cut cold boiled chicken into joints.
Mix the yolks of 2 eggs with ½ cup milk.
Add 1¼ cups flour and 1 teaspoon salt; stir until smooth.
Beat the 2 egg whites to a stiff froth.
Slowly add the batter to the egg whites, stirring constantly.
Fry and serve
Dip chicken pieces into the batter.
Fry in hot fat until golden and cooked through.
Remove with a skimmer and drain on paper.
Dress the chicken on a hot dish and garnish with parsley.
Serve with baked or French fried potatoes.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together16,675 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,389 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Whites beaten to a stiff froth lighten the batter and help it puff when fried.
- Flour
- Forms the body of the batter that coats the chicken and sets as it fries.
- Milk
- Thins the flour and egg yolks into a smooth batter that coats evenly.
The step that matters
Folding the batter into the egg whites. Adding the batter slowly while stirring constantly keeps the whites from deflating. Their trapped air is what makes the fritter coating light and puffy once it hits the hot fat.
Swap the parsley
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, egg, milk, flour, butter, fried potato):
- Nutmegfits better
- Cinnamonfits about as well
- Capersfits about as well
- Parsleythe original
Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, milk, flour, butter, fried potato. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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